Technology is awesome… or not?
I have a love-hate relationship with technology. On one hand, it fascinates me to no end. I’m endlessly amazed at the way in which it can bring strangers together for positive ends—whether it’s via Couchsurfing or Twitter or Crowdrise. I love the fact that something awful can happen in the lives of one of my volunteers at the studio and within minutes, via email, everyone can be notified and people come to the aid of someone they know very little outside of said yoga studio. I love the fact that we can have a global conversation about political issues such as WikiLeaks or tuition rates at schools and universities worldwide all via Twitter.
What gets me down are the anthropological and cultural consequences of technology in terms of human sociology and abstract thought. On one hand, technology and the internet have the ability to stimulate the brain and expose us to different cultures and ideas. Yet, on the other hand, the internet is becoming the primary source of information dissemination and I can’t help but feel that it simultaneously conditions us to be sheep and is entirely biased when it comes to the search providers. Technology has allowed us to become lazy in using our brains to do simple tasks such as calculate tips or find our way around an unfamiliar city using our memories from the last time we were “here”. Will we retain any of the information we pick up when researching something that interests us or will be trust the computer to be our memory for us? Will that be the future of the human brain—entirely dependent upon technology to exist and function?
Organic vs Conventional
I’m not talking about the choice in produce at your local supermarket… I’m talking about the fact that technological algorithms have circumvented the organic search and discover process when it comes to nearly everything and anything. Earlier this month, I posted about Twitter’s new “Who to Follow” feature and the fact that I was so disappointed in it -not so much because of the feature’s functionality, but rather due to its very existence and implementation at all. Don’t get me wrong, the notion of suggestive “selling” has been around for a long time -it’s not something brand new or prolific on a fundamental level. However, never before has its status been so elevated to steroid-fed proportions.
Suggestive marketing used to be limited to actual sales of something -services and products. Today, it applies to the “sale” of anything -whether it be a service, a product, a process, a patent (which itself has become something of a product versus a document), a public persona, or even a virtual byway to information, i.e. a hyperlink/profile for “_____” that may provide you with data that may be of interest. Dozens of internet-based services and platforms offer the “Recommended” feature in one shape or form and it’s all based on the accessibility of one’s matrix of contacts, our contacts’ networks, and your historical action with the platform. Beyond the basic suggestions of people to follow, these platforms have added a certain level of “credibility” to their tips by letting you know that someone in your circle knows this person, follows this user, bought this item, and so on. It’s believable that most people will default to referrals from those who make up their inner posse when it comes to most things in life, which is why this line of thinking works. I call this flavor of information exchange conventional because it relies on your trust in someone else versus finding out for yourself -much like seeing pictures of Michelangelo’s David in a book or online versus going to Firenze, Italy and seeing it for yourself.
For me, organic means fumbling around through the trenches yourself. Maybe you hit a restaurant that you end up hating or fall in love with an author whose book you found smashed in a bargain bin at the used bookstore downtown or you legitimately make a new friend at the park after crashing his picnic with his dog or you find a new band because they were the opening act for the Manic Street Preachers -versus checking Yelp to make sure the restaurant is for certain going to be good, reading every single review on Amazon of the #5 book on the NYT Best Seller List, or going off what Clear Channel decides is the band of the moment. I’m not saying that the online options can’t be organic either -go pilfer through some random user’s library on Last.fm or Goodreads or perform a hashtag search on Twitter to find a cool new person to follow. Organic means “derived from living matter” and when it comes to the process of search and discover, your adventure comes from actual living versus existing or passively participating!
So which is better? Which is worse? Organic or conventional? I think that both have their merits, but perhaps we should all pay attention to how much of the newly conventional suggestive “selling” we are buying into and make a point of getting our daily dose of organic adventure -no matter where it takes us.
Silence Speaks Louder Than Words
I wonder sometimes if we perhaps share too much or if the medium through which our lives our shared somehow distorts the reality of what is really going on… Perhaps we are limited by our own reflection on our own lives and then further constrained by the boundaries of technology. Why do we share? Why do we attempt to get across through an ever-limited linguistic expression of verbalism what may or may not be taking place in our life? Perhaps it is from the standpoint of understanding that we’re not alone in how we feel and in our personal flavour of living.
As Leah McClellan puts it so eloquently, “My hurt is about me and your hurt is about you. But I can water seeds of love or seeds of hurt in you, and you can do the same for me. Let’s tell each other what they are, so we can be mindful of them.”
Sometimes your hurt is overwhelming enough, however, that the clearest way of expressing it is to say nothing at all. To grow quiet, to allow the grief and the gaping hole of loss to marinate, and to speak with your silence as a way to honor and acknowledge the presence of such absence in your life.
